Expression of a heptelidic acid-insensitive recombinant GAPDH from Trichoderma virens, and its biochemical and biophysical characterization.

Trichoderma virens genome harbors two isoforms of GAPDH, one (gGPD) involved in glycolysis and the other one (vGPD) in secondary metabolism. vGPD is expressed as part of the "vir" cluster responsible for the biosynthesis of volatile sesquiterpenes. The secondary metabolism-associated GAPDH is tolerant to the anti-cancer metabolite heptelidic acid (HA), produced by T. virens. Characterizing the HA-tolerant form of GAPDH, thus has implications in cancer therapy. In order to get insight into the mechanism of HA-tolerance of vGPD, we have purified recombinant form of this protein. The protein displays biochemical and biophysical characteristics analogous to the gGPD isoform. It exists as a tetramer with Tm of about 56.5 °C, and displays phosphorylation enzyme activity with Km and Kcat of 0.38 mM and 2.55 sec, respectively. The protein weakly binds to the sequence upstream of the vir4 gene that codes for the core enzyme (a terpene cyclase) of the "vir" cluster. The EMSA analysis indicates that vGPD may not act as a transcription factor driving the "vir" cluster, at least not by directly binding to the promoter region. We also succeeded in obtaining small crystals of this protein. We have constructed structural models of vGPD and gGPD of T. virens. In silico constrained docking analysis reveals weaker binding of heptelidic acid in vGPD, compared to gGPD protein.